


bright laughter

by infelphira



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: M/M, hey just some good ol uhhhh reyson feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 09:50:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10160564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infelphira/pseuds/infelphira
Summary: Tibarn had always thought Reyson’s laughter sounded like a song.





	

Tibarn had always thought Reyson’s laughter sounded like a song.

Herons were melodic by nature, with gentle voices that carried on the wind and bright laughter and sunshine in their movements. It was hard for a hawk not to think there was music there. 

He remembers being small, and the Heron prince being small. Children, as far as laguz childhoods went. Though he rarely spent time in Serenes, it was commonly known that hawks and ravens both delighted in the company of herons and a child would be foolish to not try to sneak glimpses of white wings or snippets of company with them. Busy lives made for busy people but there was peace (as far as peace could go with slavery to beorc looming like a mountain behind them).

That’s how Tibarn knew of Naesala’s friendship of Reyson as well, through a mutual curiosity of herons. The two had the same idea of seeking, and the two had befriended the same young heron prince. Reyson seemed so much younger despite a small age gap but they knew that herons aged differently from hawks and ravens. They seemed a class of their own. None of them seemed to mind, there was always delight and laughter between them. Enveloped by peace, there was something idyllic about letting the herons live out a war-less and youthful life. Something the hawks and ravens knew they could never achieve with beorc, and so they had wordlessly agreed to always be there for the herons.

Childhood was joyous in those times. Herons were an anchor. When all the weight of the world pressed you down, their songs would carry to you in the air and whisk it away. Reyson would smile and ask for another story, and laugh with delight at his jokes. 

Well, it had been years since Tibarn had heard Reyson laugh, anyway. It seemed like a dream to remember those days.

Reyson had become hard eyed and his voice was venom– and who would blame him? He was pulled from the wreckage of a home in a chorus of screams (to their last they were melodic, in a haunting way) marking the death of everyone he’d ever known and loved. Tibarn would not have been able to laugh again, either.

Sharpening his claws in the way the world had taught him, Reyson knew that talons and might were a universal language, and he was determined to become fluent. He had taken the softer parts of his childhood and stored them out of sight, in a place they would be safe. It was hard to watch him go against his nature, a creature of order. It was hard to see someone who once brought so much light and joy to stand in silence thinking about war and revenge.  
War had dominated the hearts of many laguz, lately. 

Tibarn did not need to have a heron’s empathy to know that grief was hooking its claws in Reyson. Panic would drop his heart some days when there were grey skies and rough waves in Phoenicis and he’d spy white wings along the cliffsides. Reyson never jumped, but the look on his face would be so pained, so full of emotions he was never meant to feel that Tibarn would have moved heaven and earth to make things right, were it that he could. He didn’t need to ask to know the heron was suffering deeply, and there was nothing he could provide to alleviate it.

So Reyson coped using revenge (all fury and anger, all fire and venom, hymns becoming rituals to summon death instead of beautiful life). At least when your goal was to see every last human dead at your feet, you were distracted from your own death.

It was hardly surprising that he’d leave, one day, without telling Tibarn. He was worried, of course, but Tibarn knew that this would happen. 

Standing in the burnt remains of Serenes, (blighted, ruined, soiled, tainted– curses rolled in his head like hungry wolves for the loss of beauty and the theft of Reyson’s joy) Tibarn found himself wanting to talk Reyson out of ideas of destruction, but he also found himself agreeing with them. He wasn’t sure whether it was because he loved Reyson, or if it was just something about the nature of herons that compelled him to agree so easily sometimes. 

He didn’t care about that, so much. He did care about seeing Reyson be able to find joy in life again. He knew destruction would not bring that, and he also knew destruction was cathartic. Such decisions were not so easily made and dictated. 

Then, Leanne was found. 

All the twittering and smiling from the two of them, dazed though she was. The first person she could speak to in over twenty years. Reyson was brought back from the edge, it seemed as though all the years of his suffering bled away in that moment. They laughed, too. It was warming- healing even- for the music to return to your life, Tibarn thought. 

The road ahead would be paved yet with hardships and joys of their own, but to be able to laugh again was a valuable skill.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by my good buddy bainhardt @ tumblr for talking to me about the ship that kills me every day.
> 
> i ended this ficlet pretty prematurely. i had intended to write more (such as a reunion with rafiel) but i lost my drive.   
> also titles are hard.


End file.
